|
|
 |
|
Sylvia, Lutz, and their son Matthew picked us up at the train station. I think that Matthew, now 13 years old, has added more than a foot in height over the last time we saw him, about 18 months ago. They live in a new house, which Lutz slaved away for many months fixing it up; he rebuilt the kitchen and bathroom, redid flooring, painted walls (even moving one wall), installed a hot water heating system, and redid the electrical wiring. Sylvia added a beautiful flower garden to the backyard where we had a barbecue one evening. The food was "schmackhaft" or delicious as we sampled different types of sausage and sipped wine until well past darkness, which in these northern reaches comes around ten o'clock.
I remember having a bigger problem with jet lag than usual. The seats on the plane reclined very little and so I was only able to get in short naps rather than restful sleep. On my road to recovery, we did take in some sights such as the Titanic exhibit, containing several rooms of actual artifacts from the ship. This was all taken from the debris field between the two pieces of the ship. By law, they were not allowed to take anything from within the broken pieces of the ship. We also walked the Reeperbahn, or red light district. We also saw a Filipino Bar, however, we didn't go into the Filipino bar there because it was closed. One day, Lyn and I skated around the area with Matthew. We passed many houses with flowers on window sills, this is Lyn's favorite sight in Europe. An older couple caught up with us who proclaimed their son had the best skate shop in Hamburg, however, for some reason they were bicycling!
|
One of my most embarrassing moments occurred over at the house of a friend of Sylvia and Lutz named Tom. One by one as each of his children returned from school that day, or whatever else teenagers do, we greeted them. While pulling back my arm after one such greeting, I knocked over a glass of "Apfelsaft" (apple juice as opposed to "Apfelsinensaft" which is orange juice) onto his new carpet. So much for international relations. We struggled for 10 minutes to wring every drop of juice from the carpet. Tom and his wife, Tanya, were very nice about my clumsiness, even having the courage to show us around their home. Oh, but I didn't destroy anything else. As I mentally recounted the bedrooms we had seen, I asked why we hadn't seen Tom and Tanya's bedroom. He said that we had and promptly showed the living room to us again. We were still puzzled, when he started to pull the bed down from a cabinet in the wall. Quite a sacrifice I said. If it were me I would have dumped two of the kids into the same bedroom and claimed one of the bedrooms myself. Lutz and Sylvia made a similar sacrifice as they had taken a small bedroom with just enough space for the bed, which curled up slightly as it rested against three walls.
Their housing development dates back to a few years after World War II, as Germany was trying to rebuild. These homes may have been built quickly, but they have lasted and continue to be updated with such things as double pane windows, carpeting, new heating systems, etc.. Built of cinderblock, each building contains maybe 10 homes. From what we saw, these homes have 3 to 4 bedrooms. There were possibly 20 buildings in this sprawling development. The rent seemed very reasonable and the window flower boxes, nicely painted exteriors, and flower gardens showed a pride that we saw throughout Europe. The streets in the subdivision were narrow. Cars would often be parked on one side, blocking off one lane of a two lane street. If you happened to meet another car in one of these stretches travelling the opposite direction, one of you would need to backup.
Next